Dating Big Bird by Laura Zigman Read Free Book Online Page A

two empty seats at the bar, and he led me toward them, pulling my stool out slightly as I dropped my bags to the floor.
    He ordered a Coke with lemon, and I ordered a mineral water with ice and lime, and when our drinks, or “soft drinks” as Malcolm referred to them, arrived, we got very busy with our straws and wedges of fruit, stirring and squeezing and stirring again.
    “In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t drink anymore,” Malcolm said. “I thought I’d just mention it now in the spirit of full disclosure.”
    “I guessed.” I didn’t drink much myself anymore. Somewhere along the line, alcohol had stopped making me feel young and happy and had started leaving me feeling very old and very tired.
    “You’re observant,” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “What gave me away?”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” I turned to face him, close enough now to look straight into his eyes and see the resignation inthem. “Because most writers drink,” I finally said. “Especially journalists.” I didn’t want to say that his face had that slightly ravaged look of someone who’d been farther down the sort of road in life I always feared I’d end up on myself—the kind filled with pain and loss and solitude and grief. “It was just a lucky guess,” I added quickly.
    He sucked an ice cube into his mouth and chewed it.
    “You’re kind,” he said. “Maybe too kind.”
    “You can never be too kind. Kindness is a rare commodity these days.”
    “I’d agree with that. But it was kind of you anyway to refer to me as a writer when I’m really not one anymore.”
    “Yes, you are.”
    He sucked in another ice cube. “I’m a teacher.”
    “You’re a writer
and
a teacher.”
    He let the statement drop unrebutted, and we talked then for a while about other things.
    About the class.
    About the books he’d written.
    About the city and how we each felt about living in it.
    About a lot of things that were easy to slip in and out of.
    And as we did, I sensed that whatever it was that had derailed him had left him lost; stranded; unable to feel his way back to where he’d been before.
    “You miss it, writing,” I said quietly, more a statement than a question.
    He seemed momentarily distracted by the muted basketball game on the television set above the bar.
    “I do,” he said finally. “But not as much as I miss other things.”
    “What other things?”
    He finished his drink, then started to reach into his pocket for his wallet to settle the bill.
    “That’s a very long story, and not one you would want me to tell you tonight.”
    From the sound of his voice, I could tell the subject was closed for now.
    “Trust me,” he said, leading me toward the door. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
    I lived just a few blocks from the Cedar Tavern, and except for the sound of our shoes on the pavement, we walked together in silence most of the way. It was still early—just after ten—and unusually quiet for a weeknight in the Village. While we’d been in the bar, it had rained, and the streets, still wet and shiny slick, caused the tires of taxis going by to make a soft sticky sound. Malcolm walked me up to my brownstone—my home, my refuge, for the last six years, the longest I’d lived anywhere since leaving my parents’ house.
    He stopped, then stood there awkwardly, his hands deep in his pockets.
    “Thanks,” he said finally.
    “For what?”
    “For the conversation.”
    “You don’t have to thank me for that. I enjoyed it.”
    “I enjoyed it, too.”
    A few more seconds passed in silence before I asked him if he wanted to come in.
    “I don’t have any Coke, but I have about ten different kinds of water.”
    “Another time,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
    “Oh. Well. Okay.” I instinctively stepped back, embarrassed that he might have found my invitation too aggressive, or simply one that he was not interested in accepting.
    “I’ll see you, Ellen” was all he said